Homemade play-dough!

Why spend a bunch of money on play dough when it’s so easy to make!?

Literally it took me less than 15 minutes and I had everything in my cupboard to make it and all the ingredients are cheap! It even smells and feels like real play dough!

Homemade non toxic playdough!

1 cup water

1 cup flour

1/4 cup salt

2 TBSP cream of tarter

1 TBSP oil (I used olive)

Mix it all up in a pot heating on medium low heat, continuously mixing until it becomes a doughy non sticky mixture!

Plop it on some wax paper to cool then portion it out, add food coloring and essential oils if you want and bam! Done! So easy!

XO Kate

Mom Life

Mom life isn’t for everyone. There was a time in my life that I didn’t think it was for me. I was sure I would never have kids or even get married and if I did, it wasn’t going to be before I was 30. I was sure I had bigger plans. I was going to go away to college and get a bangin career in a big city and I was going to travel, a lot. Experience all the world had to offer.

Now here I am 25 married with two kids living the small town life and traveling for me means up north for a week. HA! Oh how god has bigger plans.

It’s crazy how when you meet the right person everythingchanges.

I met my husband and while we married fast and young we waited years to have kids.

My dreams changed. I had Ellie and she turned my whole world upside down, for the better. I loved being pregnant. I loved the baby cuddles, I was ready to have 10 more! I still would have 10 more of my husband would let me! 😜

The most amazing thing about Mom life is seeing joy through a child’s eyes.

Today we were blowing bubbles inside and the look in Ellie’s eyes. Pure joy, undeniable fun. Over a bubble. She always reminds me that it’s the little things.

<<<<<<<<<
e is nothing like it. The innocence they have. The way they light up when they learn something new and are congratulated. Whenever Ellie does something and is praised and her eyes light up, my heart just melts.

I used to not want kids because I always saw them acting out, being naughty, all that scary stuff. I didn't want anything to do with that. The crazy thing is though, my girls are nothing like that. Literally the sweetest most well behaved children I've ever met, AND I'm often told that not only by friends and family but even by complete strangers. Just today we went shopping and when we were checking out the cashier commented on how nice and quiet they were. Obviously they have their crabby days but they're far and few between.

I learned a lot in college about communication, what you should do and what you shouldn't. I grew a lot and learned not everyone is the same. I didn't have to repeat history and my children didn't have to be unruly and whiney. While I think there is a wide variety of things that affect the way children act, like environment, foods, health…. All I know is my husband and I are doing something right. I am so blessed.

I am so grateful that god had bigger plans for me than I thought. I love Mom life and thank god everyday for giving me my girls. I am so grateful that now that I have children we can travel with them. We can bring them places we haven't even seen yet and we can experience it not only through our own eyes, but theirs.

Fun in the Sun ☀️

My chemical free journey started before I had my children but having them has made me strive for the best of the best for our family. Checking out products on the Think Dirty app has helped us truly rid the chemical laden products we had been using in our home. Although I could talk all day about everything I’ve replaced and what I’ve replaced it with, since its summer let’s talk sunscreen! 

Sunscreen is vital during the hot summer months when our littles want to spend endless hours outside playing, right? But we shouldn’t have to sacrifice our health for this… in fact we need sun exposure too, vitamin D is critical! But what’s in sunscreen and exactly what does that SPF really mean? Among a lot of the scary ingredients listed, they often include ingredients that act as “penetration enhancers” and help the product adhere to skin. Which means many sunscreen chemicals are absorbed into the body and can be measured in blood, breast milk and urine samples. 😵 So a lot of them say if under 6 months ask a doctor… yet they’re going to be in my breast milk?! Ugh, how awful! 

There are so many factors that go into sunscreen. Why we use it, what it’s good for and so on. I want to talk about a few specific things. SPF, how we need vitamin D, and chemicals. 

SPF is not strength it’s actually time. It means, say I burn in the sun after 10 minutes when I use no sunscreen but if I use an SPF 10 then I have 10x the protection of 10 minutes so essentially I’m protected after one application of spf 10 sunscreen for 100 minutes. So really SPF kind of means nothing… well… it just means if you have a smaller SPF then you should apply more often. I recently just learned this and I couldn’t believe I didn’t know it before. Ha! I thought it meant the higher the SPF the better the protection. So then I still wanted to use the lower SPF because we need some vitamin D too. 

So about how we need vitamin D. We need it for soooo many things but how about how it keeps us happy! The sun is so demonized. I mean we truly need the vitamin D. We have an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency and then people start taking a synthetic vitamin so that they can “make up” that vitamin D deficiency. When I was in high school I had a vitamin D deficiency, so you know what my doctor recommended? She recommended I take a vitamin…. Why not just get out in the sun for a few hours everyday? As a mom, now I try really hard to get me and the girls outside everyday. Even if it’s just for an hour or even an hour here a half hour there throughout the day. It’s literally essential for our health! We do wear sunscreen especially when it’s between the hours of 10am and 2pm! I used to make my own and absolutely LOVED it! Young Living just came out with a sunscreen though and let’s be honest, with 2 kids under 2 years of age this is going to save me time and sanity. 😜the Young Living sunscreen is an SPF 10 sunscreen and its broad spectrum and absolutely amazing!! I feel confident applying it to my children knowing it’s not filled with awful hormon disrupting skin penetrating chemicals. 

It is made with naturally derived plant- and mineral-based ingredients, dermatologist tested and hypoallergenic and formulated without UV chemical absorbers (the thing I mentioned earlier where it can get into your skin/breast milk), parabens, phthalates, petrochemicals, animal-derived ingredients, synthetic preservatives, synthetic fragrances, or synthetic dyes. 

Let’s talk more about chemicals….So I was watching a video on how obviously the sun is a factor with skin cancer but it can’t be the only thing. Like think about it this way… you wear something toxic on your skin with a bunch of chemicals and you get burned. Essentially burning those toxins into your skin. 😵😫 Uhhhh hellooooo yes. This. Obviously this is playing a HuGE factor in skin cancer?! How can it not?! 

I’d rather take my natural SPF 10 and not burn than any toxic chemical laden SPF 50 into my skin. No thanks. 

If you want more information on Young Livings new sunscreen and how to get it click here! 

Checkout the EWG for more information on natural health related stuff!

Not today.

Life in general can be tough, and sometimes for no reason at all. We aren’t always all 100% smiley rays of sunshine every single day so why is it we expect children to never be cranky?  This is something that has been tugging at my heart lately not only when my own daughter is being defiant but also when I’m out and about and see other children expressing themselves or when mommies are posting on social media about it.

We cant all be perfect all the time. Its just not possible and we know this. 

I will be the first one to tell you if I’m having a bad day and that I just want to be left alone, so why can’t kids feel this way? We’re constantly telling children what to do, how to do it and when said thing needs to be done. But I have days that maybe I just don’t want to get dressed right this second or maybe I am just not hungry when supper is ready….. but I might be hungry in a half hour or an hour.  Since I am the boss of me I get to decide those things, our poor children, most of them, don’t get to decide this stuff. Not saying they should be the boss of themselves because they need us to guide them, show them right and wrong and help them learn so they can grow into wonderful adults but what about letting them at least express themselves enough so one day they know they have this voice and that they can use this voice and so that one day when they’re older they don’t just conform to whatever society wants them to think. I want my daughter to think freely and think outside the box and be able to question something if she feels it might not be right. I don’t want to her to grow up and just be able to be pushed around. She is a boss and bossy at times but shes my mini me so we all know where she learned this. I love this about her. I love that she is independent. I love that I can give her options and she can choose which one she wants whether its an outfit for the day or if she just doesn’t want what I made her for supper. That’s fine, I will let her pick something different. I do this because I like to have options, I like to be the boss of myself and be able to choose what I wear and what I eat, so I want that for my daughter as well.

 What a sad world it would be if I didn’t have these options.  

We should let our children choose these things and be cranky if they want to be cranky. Just like how we all want to choose what we wear and what we eat, we want to be able to express our crankiness without someone telling us “no you can’t feel that way,” because who are they to know how I should feel? So why is it when kids are cranky parents often tell them to stop? It’s not like we can read their mind, we don’t know how they’re feeling or why they’re feeling that way so why not let them express it? Why would we want them to cover up their emotions? Personally, I like to express how I am feeling, not everyone is this way but I remember when I was little or even as a teenager my mom didn’t make me suppress these emotions.  She’d talk it over with me or just leave me alone if that’s what I asked. If I didn’t want what she made for supper (which I honestly cant remember one time I didn’t want her delicious food) but she didn’t care, she would let me have something different or she let me leave those brussel sprouts on my plate because she knew I just didn’t like this. Because you know what? There’s always tomorrow.  Maybe tomorrow I would want my vegetables.  I liked that she let me be independent and make these decisions because although they may seem small, to a child they only have these small decisions.  A small decision might be a big decision to a child.  Children don’t have to make huge life changing decisions like adults so why not let them choose these little things so they can be more in control of what life brings them?

Let those children be cranky and let them not eat those veggies.  Pick your battles with them because there’s always tomorrow.  Maybe tomorrow they won’t be cranky and maybe tomorrow they wont mind getting dressed when they’re told. Maybe today they’re just having a bad day and they just want to be left alone.  We can’t always do whatever others want from us 100% of the time and we cant always be happy rays of sunshine 100% of the time and that’s okay.